Establishing operational and maintenance controls helps to ensure that your organization’s critical equipment, systems, processes and facilities are operated and maintained to achieve optimal output and efficient performance. Operational and maintenance controls can take a variety of forms. They can include any combination of things such as procedures and work instructions, physical controls, or the use of licensed or other qualified personnel. Determining operational and maintenance controls involves identifying and planning activities to ensure that critical factors affecting energy performance are known, used, and communicated to responsible personnel.
Advancing from Foundational Level 1 to ISO 50001 Level 2 for Step 3.5
In Level 1 you addressed operating and maintenance criteria and operational and maintenance controls for your projects. Once identified, you need to make sure you operate and maintain relevant equipment and systems in accordance with the established criteria. ISO 50001 (Level 2) has similar requirements but requires operational and maintenance criteria be identified and controls established for your significant energy uses (SEUs) where the absence of these criteria could result in a significant deviation in energy performance. Your organization must determine what will constitute a significant deviation and establish the appropriate criteria and controls where required. The SEUs must be operated and maintained in accordance with these criteria and the control requirements must be communicated to all appropriate personnel including contractors.
Your organization should have effective operating and maintenance criteria in place for all your major facilities, equipment, systems and processes. As you complete your action plans, it’s important that you consider determining new or modified operating and maintenance criteria associated with major processes or equipment. Optimal operating criteria such as running conditions and maintenance practices for equipment can maximize equipment operational efficiency and allow equipment to achieve its design service life. For example, you may have an action plan that reduces the air pressure for one of your organization’s air compressors. In this example, the new operating pressure set points for the air compressor system are the operating criteria that need to be determined in this step.
Other typical examples of operating criteria include occupancy timer settings, HVAC temperature settings, furnace and oven temperature set points, steam boiler pressure, freezer and cooler temperature set points, water temperature generated by chillers, and line speeds. Similarly, optimal maintenance practices should be considered such as filter replacement, lubrication, tension adjustment, leak repair, cleaning, fluid levels, vibration analysis, etc.
These operating and maintenance criteria should be determined in coordination with affected personnel. It’s important that everyone who’s potentially affected is briefed and has a say in determining the optimal operating and maintenance criteria for the new process or equipment.
Once the operating criteria are determined, operational controls should be considered that help to ensure operation within the identified criteria. Operational controls can be as simple as signage and labeling, or they can be more complicated control methods such as mechanical controllers, measuring equipment, instrumentation, or documented procedures.
3.5.2 Operate and maintain in accordance with criteria
Once the operating criteria and suitable controls are determined, you need to make sure to operate and maintain the equipment in accord with the criteria. To do this, the criteria need to be communicated to all impacted personnel, including any contractors. Robust processes for communicating the required controls ensures that expectations with regard to the new operating criteria are known and understood by the appropriate personnel. You can communicate the controls and criteria information through a variety of methods including emails, meetings, trainings, signage, documentation such as checklists or standard operating procedures (SOPs), mentoring, or other communication processes.
Resources & Examples
EPA ENERGY STAR Guidelines for Energy Management: Contains a step-by-step road map for continuous improvement, based on best practices as compiled by the EPA ENERGY STAR Program. Refer to Step 5.3 of the ENERGY STAR Guidelines for guidance specific to eGuide Step 3.5.
Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) Energy MAP: SEAI’s Energy MAP tool provides a step-by-step guide to creating a best practice action plan for energy management. Refer to Step 16 of the SEAI Energy MAP for helpful guidance specific to eGuide Step 3.5.
